No one, they said, would vote for a president with a voice like that. But women are supposed to smile β men thought Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren should smile more. One is to construct a stereotypeβa generic representation which captures what makes the way of speaking distinctive, but which is simpler and more extreme than any real-life example of its use.
In the case of fundy baby voice that attitude is strongly negative, as you can tell not only from what is said about it e. It was ingrained in every woman I knew from church and every time I speak about it, folks will point out that I sound that way myself.
Yes, friends. Girls learned, in other words, how to speak so that others would listen to them. We are all products of gendered language socialization, which is practised in some form in all communities. They are kind women who show up for others in sickness and in need. They take care of their families and their neighbors and their church sisters and brothers. They are living the life they feel called to leadβI give them grace and understanding.
They are not out to harm others. But is it right, factually or morally, to make that argument only about fundamentalist women? But by making a specifically female way of speaking into a symbol of the hypocrisy of the religious Right, we are, in effect, scapegoating the women. But it would surely be possible to hold her to accountβfor what she said in her speech, for her record of espousing repellent political views, and indeed for her general hypocrisyβwithout bringing her voice into it.
Is the voice-shaming of right-wing Christian women by leftists and feminists not itself hypocritical? How is it different from what feminists objected to so strenuously in , the voice-shaming of Hillary Clinton by conservatives and woman-haters? Some feminists might reply that the question is obtuse: the two cases are obviously completely different. Whereas Clinton was criticized for flouting patriarchal speech-norms e. Which brings me to the second point. Making high-profile women the subject of endless public commentary about how nasty or stupid or babyish they sound is a form of sexist language-policing that has a negative effect on all women.
